Personification of Force and Violence — for Hesiod the daughter of the Titan Pallas and the Oceanid Styx, and one of her four children who attend Zeus.1
Bia is the personification of Force and brute Violence. In Hesiod's Theogony she is the daughter of the Titan Pallas and the Oceanid Styx, named last of the four wonderful children whom Styx bore in her house: Zelus (Emulation) and trim-ankled Nike (Victory), and after them Cratos (Strength) and Bia (Force). Apollodorus gives the same parentage, listing her last of the four offspring of Pallas and Styx as Violence, while Hyginus, who keeps the line of Pallas and Styx, renders the same figure under her Latin name Vis (Force).2
Like her brothers and sister, Bia has no house apart from Zeus, no dwelling and no path except where the god leads; instead the four sit forever beside Zeus the loud-thunderer. This nearness is the wage of an old loyalty: when the Olympian called the deathless gods to Olympus and promised that whoever fought at his side against the Titans should keep his office and honour, Styx came first of all, on the counsel of her father Oceanus, bringing her children with her. Zeus honoured her with great gifts and made her the great oath of the gods, and her children he kept to live with him always.3
⁂
the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
